The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.

Streamlining Your Business For Success

One common complaint I hear amongst entrepreneurs is that they seem to have even less free time as business owners than they did when they were working a 9-5 job. Most entrepreneurs, including myself, start businesses so we could have the freedom to do the things we enjoy rather than be a slave to the clock. More often than not, however, the opposite ends up coming true.

If this sounds like your situation, here are a few business tips I picked up in my journey as a small business owner that will help you put a little more breathing space in your day.

Outsource Time Consuming Tasks

One of my favorite business tips that really helped me was to hire people to handle tasks I had no time or interest in dealing with. As a new business owner, it is tempting to try to do everything yourself in order to save money (especially if you don’t have any in the first place). In the long run, however, you end up losing money due to missed opportunities because you were tied up doing non income producing work.

If you hired a virtual assistant for an hour a day at $25 and then spent that hour talking to prospects that purchase $50 worth of products, not only did that virtual assistant pay for herself, you came out ahead $25.

Make Good Use of Technology

Another good one out of my bucket of small business tips is to make good use of both online and offline technology to help you run your business. There are tons of software applications out there for both your cell phone and your computer that will help you get a handle on your daily tasks, customer contact and financial affairs among other things.

For example, I love Twitter and I use it extensively to market my online shopping business. However, sitting in front of my computer and tweeting for hours a day just did not work for me. So I looked around the internet and found a few Twitter tools that let me automate my tweets which allowed me to spend more time talking to prospects while still getting my sales message to my community of followers.

Get Prospects to Filter Themselves Out

You can usually tell which ones are the good quality business tips by how long and how often people have been promoting the idea. One tip that has been offered for years but which is still ignored by new business owners is to only sell to your target market.

A lot of new entrepreneurs chase after customers under the mistaken impression that everyone they meet should be their client. The truth is not everyone is going to need or even be interested in what you have to sell. You want to focus your attention only on the people who are interested in your products. Spend some time figuring out the demographics of your target market and you’ll find it much easier to sell to your prospects.